D&D 5E House rule for in combat healing and yoyo at 0 HP

[Vaalingrade]

Not to mention that sometimes players like to play their characters according to how they perceive their personality traits/bonds/ideals/flaws/motivations/etc and not just according to what someone on the internet thinks is mechanically "optimal". If someone feels their character is more likely to dole out healing and buffs immediately rather than wait, well... who are we to tell them the "right" way to play?

The guy who can't play his character now because the rules are bad and the other player didn't adjust for that and the DM punished them for both the designers' and the other player's actions?

 

[Pedantic]

This ignores the cost in action economy of the character that goes down, not to mention the possibility of that character getting outright killed in the intervening round.

Those are quite conditional costs though.

1. The character is at no risk of death, unless enemies continue attacking downed characters, something that is understandably controversial. You cannot die of your own accord in less than 2 turns, and if you save successfully on the 1st one, that's another turn saved.
2. There is only an action cost if the downed PC's turn occurs before the healer's turn, which is one of 5e's truly weird optimization cases, particularly given there isn't a native delay action.

There's some fringe cases, but the general optimization case is quite clear.

 

[Reynard]

Those are quite conditional costs though.

1. The character is at no risk of death, unless enemies continue attacking downed characters, something that is understandably controversial.

I don't think it is controversial if there is a major yo-yo problem in effect. If this is a standard tactic, then enemies know it is a thing that could happen. Intelligent enemies will respond accordingly. Mindless ones like zombies will just keep eating and beast will likely drag the downed character off.

Just letting party members drop should never, ever be a viable strategy.

 

[Pedantic]

I mean it helps, making it relatively more optimal to heal characters while they're up. And sure, it also makes the game harder and more deadly, and if that's not what one wants then it is bad solution. However, given that a lot of people feel that the game is too easy, to them this might be basically solving two problems at once.

What exactly is desired though? Because while I think the "game is too easy" case is pretty well founded, the change you're proposing doesn't actually change optimal PC decision making overmuch. At best, you're raising the skill floor in the game, thus that PCs can't afford to take suboptimal actions as often as they could before.

5e suffers more from a pretty low skill ceiling. Once your PCs understand focus fire and aren't actively wasting their turns, increasing lethality doesn't really change the difficulty, they'll just die more often.

 

[ad_hoc]

What exactly is desired though? Because while I think the "game is too easy" case is pretty well founded, the change you're proposing doesn't actually change optimal PC decision making overmuch. At best, you're raising the skill floor in the game, thus that PCs can't afford to take suboptimal actions as often as they could before.

5e suffers more from a pretty low skill ceiling. Once your PCs understand focus fire and aren't actively wasting their turns, increasing lethality doesn't really change the difficulty, they'll just die more often.

Only if all enemies are zombies.

The challenge in D&D is coming up with solutions to problems.

This applies to combat, exploration, and social encounters.

All 3 can be very easy or very difficult.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

The guy who can't play his character now because the rules are bad and the other player didn't adjust for that and the DM punished them for both the designers' and the other player's actions?

Sorry... what? Less snark in your response please so I can engage with it.

 

[Pedantic]

Only if all enemies are zombies.

The challenge in D&D is coming up with solutions to problems.

This applies to combat, exploration, and social encounters.

All 3 can be very easy or very difficult.

I agree with you in an abstract sense, but that's a very general statement that doesn't really get into how the combat mechanics work. In practice, the in-combat decision making is generally not that difficult, particularly if you're playing a class that has relatively few options like a Fighter. Even if you do have options, you're really just evaluating the opportunity cost of buffing, your DPR, and the impact of your crowd control. There's some nuance, but generally you're picking a reasonable option from those, and then picking a reasonable target.

 

[ad_hoc]

I agree with you in an abstract sense, but that's a very general statement that doesn't really get into how the combat mechanics work. In practice, the in-combat decision making is generally not that difficult, particularly if you're playing a class that has relatively few options like a Fighter. Even if you do have options, you're really just evaluating the opportunity cost of buffing, your DPR, and the impact of your crowd control. There's some nuance, but generally you're picking a reasonable option from those, and then picking a reasonable target.

I guess our games just look different.

In our last session the party went dragon hunting. Once they found the lair though they found a chasm that was difficult to navigate and gave the dragon the ability to hit and run.

They needed to try out different ways of engaging on the challenge and a CR 6 creature nearly wiped them out despite not being a particularly difficult encounter on paper.

If the dragon just flew up to them and clawed at them until dead it would have been simple though.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

That's a shame - I think we likely agreed.

 

[NotAYakk]

As a DM for my group I have found that I dislike that my players (understandably) let their characters drop to 0 before doing any healing which causes the yoyo effect.

A huge amount of the "0 HP yoyo" is because DMs aren't vicious at 0 HP.

In a typical encounter, someone at 0 HP can be dead before anyone else gets to heal them.

Instead, we have DMs that build super-deadly 5 minute encounter day fights to be "exciting", and then treat PCs with kid gloves once they drop them to 0 HP to not kill the PC.

If a character at 0 HP surviving to be healed is a rare event, then PCs won't treat it as a yo-yo healing opportunity, because healing spells don't work on the dead. Revivify (or stronger magic) is the only option, costing a 300 gp diamond, a full action, and touch range.

Then by late T2/T3 you start having foes that steal, damage or destroy corpses.

Doing "double tap" or in other ways actively trying to finish a PC without giving some heads up what is at stake is not something I want to do.

Thus, 0 HP isn't threatening enough to avoid. So you added mechanics to up its threat again.

Trust me, if double-tap is common, your "wait to heal until they have 0 HP" goes away. In fact, PCs are likely to start fleeing when at low HP because they fear being dropped to 0 HP. Because 0 HP is a prelude to rolling a new PC, not getting up next turn slowed.